I had to find my own hurt locker, you know the one where you go to at the end of the day, and slam open or shut the door on its hinge as you let go of that pent up frust from the day’s events?

And inside you’ll find cut up photographs of your ex-girlfriends, or boyfriends (whatever your sexual orientation may be), or your crushes and admirers, along with piles of school textbooks of which you spent your holiday’s pocket money with but never bothered to put them in your bag, because they’re too bulky to be carried around.

Then on somedays that locker becomes your best friend as you know that it’s the one place where you can go to and confide with, without it ever telling you off or analysing how silly your decisions probably were. Heck it probably won’t even say anything, it merely listens, and we all need a listening ear sometimes.

Well I couldn’t find my hurt locker.

Where is my confidant? My late mum was the closest to one that I’ve ever had, and I suppose the next best thing to come along would be, wait for it…  you! Yes, you, Mr and Ms Internet, whoever you are and may be.

Like a hurt locker, you’re anonymous, you’re a noun, and you listen (hopefully~) and I do recognise familiar voices, where at times you leave me with crumbs and leftovers for me to munch on whenever you comment here. So thank you, for that voice. I guess everyone needs that little voice to give them a nudge sometimes. Nobody wants to be alone right?

However most of the time it’s been a solitary journey, yet strangely comforting and arguably it’s one that keeps the engine running and one that keeps the meter running.

I guess that’s my answer should anyone ask me, ‘Do you still blog, and why?’.

Or maybe my answer could be, “I’m hoping that it’ll lead me to my hurt locker, where memories are stored and shared. I hope it gets vandalised with little words or big words, as long as it gets vandalised, where it’s sort of an indication of an entity’s existence. I wish it’s big enough to fit my needs yet inconspicuous to be ‘off the radar’. Most imprtantly, my hurt locker’s not just gonna be about the hurt, but the joys, the tribulations and the jubilations of days passed by.”

I could probably call it ‘The Locker Of life’, or ‘The Scribe Locker’, but I guess ‘The Hurt Locker’ sounds dramatic and catchy. Eh, wait a sec, didn’t a movie with the same name won Best Picture as well? I suppose the locker belonging to the main character of that movie’s can be likened to a blog online eh?

Anyway congrats to “The Hurt Locker’s” team and their victories. Though I still think there was a movie that was much more deserving to have walked away with more recognition than the jibes and snubs that it received. Avatar deserves it’s award, but that’s how hollywood goes, and fans of Pandora will just have to bite the bullet.

Gee, where’s that hurt locker when you need one eh?

Of course, I’m thankful that there’s a project for us folks at the office and production to be working with, but I certainly wasn’t subscribing for it to take place over the weekend.

The weekend, a time when most of us will be enjoying waking up as late as we ought to, but I had to wake by 9am. No, not because of work though, but because I had a rendez-vouz with Jake Sully and Neytiri at Lido, Shaw House that morning.

Yep, it was Avatar-mania all over again, even if it’s in its 13th week of showing here, it still feels fresh and thankfully, the theatre wasn’t that full, or else my movie experience will be spoiled with blatant ringtones, baby wailings or musings of crackers’ packaging being ripped open.

But I did head back to the office, after the movie to continue with my workload, which somehow bloated up as the weekend approached.

And I guess it made me tick off a customer, or should I add the verb, ‘irritating’ to it, as the fella kept sending me horrendous artworks for print, again and again and again.

Yes, I can be patient, and it has its virtues, but I suppose being firm and direct has its fair share of virtues too. If that fella is too slack to tighten his strings, and starts giving me a hell lot more work than I should be bothered to do, then I make sure hell goes back to where it came from. Fair enough?

This line I’m in, there are just some blokes that aren’t cut out to be here, and I think it’ll even do Singapore’s productivity much good if these deadweights take up another hobby, other than ‘harassing that good looking and helpful FA artist at the printshop’.

On a separate issue, and totally unrelated to these musings above, I think I’ve hit the jackpot in ‘How to become an early riser’, after almost years of battling the sleeping monster everytime my alarm goes off.

I reach office late, EVERYDAY, but a few years back, at my old company, I always come on time. Usually, as latecomers get fined. Heh.

So now I’d have thought that setting my alarm to go off earlier would make me wake up earlier, which it did, but after which I’d only go back to sleep again, considering that there’s time to spare.

Which then leads me to waking up late, and reaching the office late again. Bravo.

BUT I think I’ve done enough to give myself credit, in rising to the challenge of being an early rise, these past 2-3 days, and I’m still fishy if this new technique I’m working on is really working, because if it is, then it’s really really great news.

News which means, I get to work early, get more productive earlier, and gets to go home earlier too!

So just how do I do it?

Well, let’s just say I’m not prepared to reveal much details yet, because I fear it might just sound silly — yes sillier than sending horrendous artworks for print — unless I give it a few more days’ test, to report on its effectiveness.

Awww, you wanna be an early riser too?

PS: Have you seen my blogpost where I muse on who really should be given the Oscar’s Best Picture? Guess you haven’t, so here it is. And the winner for the Best Picture goes to..

Gee, when is a scam ever cute?

Actually, never, but when it’s a 13year old kiddo that’s having a major Schizophrenia attack, who simply can’t decide if he want’s to be an Englishman or a Frenchman, it’s surely cute as a pie.

Only 13year olds, learned in the art of texting, will apply such slang and blasphemous language, while phishing, upon the blob of ADHD-overloaded working adults, that is facebook users, and start phishing.

For the uninitiated, phishing is when someone, or some site, imitates 99% of another legitimate site and makes you go through the (pretentious) usual username+password login thingy, only to steal that info and then dump you into a dummy website, where if you’re lucky, videos of Obama Vin Diesel are on incessant reruns.

If you’re unlucky, they just steal your username+password, your credit card details, your personal addresses, your baby photos, your list of most visited porn sites and then send these information to a scam ring in Nigeria, and you wouldn’t want that to happen right?

Like who’d want their list of porn sites to be stolen? (In any case, I’ll show my favourite here, so there’s no need to steal them from me anymore.)

So I enjoy playing Zynga Poker on Facebook a lot, and it’s taught me plenty of life applicable lessons as well, especially in the summarised context of when to hold your cards, and when to fold your cards.

Btw since Zynga Poker utilises virtual currency, there’s no real money involved, so I’ll consider myself vindicated of any gambling accusations, and gambling is bad for you — IF you’re a lousy gambler that is, because gambling is a skill and luck is only temporary.

Anyway, back to this phishing scam thingy, it’s applaudable that there was effort to think of coming up with a username like ‘Zynga Admin’ or an appname like ‘Texasholdem_center’, but at the same time, it’s laughable that its sales’ pitch was badly translated.

That’s what you get from outsourcing your copywriting materials to your cousins eh?

And using the title ‘Final Warning’ when this is the first (fake) warning that i’m receiving from the phisher, it just don’t add up.

Though the scammer did one thing right, that is to provide a time frame for facebook (dumb) users to react and proceed to the phishing site or app, 24hours is simply too short a time.

Like what if people genuinely forgot about it and missed the deadline, and when they don’t get kicked out of the game, won’t they realise that your threat is simply, for the lack of a better words (and it rhymed, a little), full of crap.

AND you know what makes this scam an even bigger sham? That the scammer is phishing a virtual gambling game, which uses virtual currency with which you’re only able to buy virtual drinks and snacks for your virtual friends.

Maybe the phisher could share a thing or two from these real(ly) dumb criminals.

In an FA artist’s world of vector graphics and layout editing, you either belong within the Illustrator/Indesign camp, the Coreldraw camp, the Freehand camp, or the ‘I-did-it-in-excel/word/powerpoint’ camp.

And of course there are some who belong into the ‘Here’s a piece of paper with my pencil layout so go ahead and print’ camp, which really shouldn’t be a camp at all in the first place.

Instead of a camp it could be a museum exhibition, because these people are certainly destined for extinction.

All these in an FA artist’s make believe world of course.

Personally, I’m an Illustrator converted into Freehand camp, and I’ve stayed there religiously ever since, as what’s not to love about a vector app that handles images fluidly, works bezier curves like a charm, and operates inobtrusively and responsibly with its ‘clipping mask’ ability.

FreehandMX is beautiful.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but you could probably imagine my devastation as it failed on me time and time again, whenever I installed FreehandMx onto my Mac and tried launching it.

It’s similar to the frustration of a pensioned Singapore man going to Geylang and his not-so-younger brother just won’t ’sedia^1′.

My beloved FreehandMX failed to launch repeatedly, no matter how many clean installs of it I made, and it didn’t hit me to search Google for a solution, until today that is.

FreeFreehand’s wordpress blog was top searched and it managed to solve my Freehand issues within a few minutes.

A tiny ZIP file download, a short extraction and pretty soon after, Freehand launched for the very first time, on my Mac.

It’s similar to the satisfaction of a pensioned Singapore man g…. oh, nevermind.

Bottomline is, FreehandMX worked like a charm, and if any Mac users are facing similar issues after a reboot of Mac OS X 10.6.2, aren’t you glad that I have your solution here?

———-

¹Sedia: ‘Sedia’ is a military command, in the Malay language, which simply calls for recruits to stand in attention, still and firm.

What’s odourless, intangible yet useful at times and best of all, free?

GiveAwayOfTheDay.com of course, and having stumbled upon this website and used it’s freebies for much too long, I thought maybe it’ll be great if you guys knew about it.

Basically, that site gives away free softwares, they don’t expire and leave any foul smell not do they break down and decompose.

The software given away, read this, are fully licensed and workable out-of-the-box softwares, for anyone to use, anywhere.

You probably won’t find the latest Microsoft Office version, or any Adobe products, and while the software given away (free) aren’t raelly industrial strength, they are quite good and useful in their own rights.

Once in a while, gems (figuratively speaking) will be dropped and if you don’t check it out daily and miss those apps that you really want, then you’ll have to fork some money and purchase them instead.

Remember, GiveAwayOfTheDay.com’s website’s business model is like a box of chocolates — it’s great, and almost sinful.

Do you remember your very first introduction into the music video world?

No? Well neither do I.

It’s hit us as common as news of John Terry vs Wayne Bridge, and as often as how fake Tiger Woods press conference of an apology was, and pretty soon everything gets old.

And then something like this crops up and makes you go, “Ooh, I gotta watch it again. Replay!”

OK GO, had one of the most viral music videos, apart from Risk Astley’s tunes, with their treadmill mtv, and they sure didn’t do anything wrong with this one.

And with EMI not even pulling the plug (preventing youtube embeds of it’s mtvs on sites like mine here), rejoice!

I like this video. I really do, and not since a long time have I liked a music video for its cleverness, and this is a really clever video.

Clever not in a rocket science manner, but clever in its execution and direction.

OK Go’s music may yet to earn them any grammys, but hey, their videos are uber cool~!

I wonder how long it took to prepare for the props?

I. Love. Cats.

ANNNNNNNNND this movie has got a cat in 3D. Like, hello~?

It’s a no brainer that my favourite character has got to be that Chesire Cat — does it have a name???

Hmm, maybe I’ll call it Jake Sully.

Catch Alice in Wonderland Movie starting from 4th March 2010 and join the official Facebook and Twitter page!

Meow.

You’ve seen it by now and you’ve probably heard all about it, but for the uninitiated, Aaron Ramsey, 19year old Welsh international prodigy, broke his leg. Warning: not for the faint hearted.

2 years ago, Eduardo broke his leg, and even Diaby suffered similar injuries.

How cursed can Arsenal be with such a horrendous injury history — not that they’re asking for it or anything — but this time round, there’s a difference in the situation.

Eduardo was on the end of a very bad challenge, from a player tilting towards the malicious side of the game, while Aarom Ramsey, I believe, is simply unlucky.

Yes, unlucky that he broke his leg in a 50/50 challenge with Ryan Shawcross, a recent fresh entrant into the England Squad by Capello, and who has gone on to apologise profusely for the predicament befalling the young Welshman.

In football, if you don’t go in for a challenge, one might as well sit at home and enjoy a game of Monopoly, and in this case, it’s definitely an accident.

A hugely horrific accident, but does Shawcross deserve the red card?

Judging by the situation at hand, yes he does, to simmer any potential emotions and to prevent any triggering of ‘revenge’ tackles from Ramsey’s teammates.

I do believe and am not saying that there’ll be such a tackle, but what would you do when you see your buddy getting kicked with a broken leg?

There’s simply a chance that tackles get harder and tougher, and bringing the perpetrator out of the game, simmers it.

Referee did the right thing, but does Shawcross deserves to be branded ‘Thug’ or ‘Malicious’ player with that tackle?

No, he does not.

That lad’s an immense talent, and he’s a strong, hard tackler and there’s definitely nothing malicious about the intent in the play that builds up to the injury, and there was plenty of grievances as the big lad trudged off the pitch in tears, after checking on Ramsey’s condition with a comforting palm.

It’s just unfortunate that Ramsey’s leg buckled, as his was planted onto the ground.

It begs the question of what if it was Shawcross that suffered the broken leg?

By any means, it was a possibility as even Ramsey had went into the challenge himself, with both players attempting to kick away the ball.

What makes it even less malicious is that there wasn’t even any lunging or jumping into the challenge by both players.

It’s a sick injury, a horrific accident, and sure that Shawcross takes the blame for that injury, but for certain he is to be vindicated of any thuggery or malicious claims.

It’s purely bad luck, and it could happen to anyone, anywhere, and I hope Ramsey realises this and recovers as fast as he can to get back to enjoying the game that he loves.

Sitting in the living room, on the couch, watching last night’s news replay on the catastrophic earthquake in Chile brought me chills.

Or was the shivers due to the living room fan that’s been blowing my way for the past few hours at my bare-chested self?

Either way, the news is an uncomfortable one, even for someone like me, who is far away and quite seemingly on another planet as the quake hits the South American nation, threatening huge, gigantic tsunamis, which could possibly equal that of 2004’s disaster.

Back then it was the deadlest recorded tsunami ever, and there’s fear that it won’t retain that record for long — unfortunately and alarmingly foreboding — if forecasts are to be realised.

Japan tells coastal people to evacuate for tsunami.

Auckland receives its share of threats.

Philipines raises alerts.

But these are just some of the places to be hit by the tsunami, and if it does lands, I hope swift aid from respective government ensues, with adequate preparations in an event disaster strikes.

Better prepared than never right?

‘Please’ is such a simple and unobtrusive word, when it comes to negotiations, and I couldn’t have realised the power and weight that it carried until my Dad threw it on me this afternoon.

In a good way of course.

I’ll get to that story in a while, but first let me reiterate its most common usage and that is within the service industry, such as one that I’m in.

I print stuffs, and occasionally have the opportunity some creatives and on-site events or advertising installations, with plenty of communications and miscommunications to go.

Not surprisingly a huge chunk of my time is spent negotiating, renegotiating and killing off a dead negotiation.

So I deal with customers on topics such as time and costs, applications or installations, effectiveness, and validity, and the actual list that I negotiate daily, can probably be quite lengthy, and whatever the topic may be, and case in point — I negotiate a lot.

So much so that I use the word ‘please’ in obscene amounts, and most probably in trying to come off as polite and unobtrusive but mostly in trying to win the customer’s agreement by appearing subtle and inviting when I begin conversations with that word.

I was quite wrong actually, because I realise that utlising please in such a construction is like begging for attention.

And beggers are usually the ire of society, and when you’re begging, you lose authority.

BUT, use it correctly, and it transforms from mere begging, into an authoritarium ultimatum that is wrapped in firm persuasion yet inviting at the same time.

Case in point, where my Dad used the word at the end of a question for the first time, after bugging me with ‘Will you follow us to Tioman Island during March’s holiday?’ for the last few days.

You see my Dad don’t use that word so often with me (All Dad’s don’t beg with their children right? They like to appear strong, and my dad, he is a little bit brash, stubborn, defensive and strongheaded, but in fact he’s one of the most polite and gamely gentleman that I have the pleasure of ever knowing.) and it hit me unexpectedly when he used it on me earlier this afternoon.

I didn’t have any intentions of going to Tioman Islands, at all, ‘cos I didn’t want to spend 3 days commuting in a rush within a foreign land with limited internet access, but most importantly of all, I didn’t want to be spending at all on leisure activities.

I’m currently on a self-imposed budget-appreciation mode at the moment. Something that I’ve picked up from playing plenty of Poker games, where I learn that with cards that you’re dealt with in life, you gotta learn when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

And I was prepared to fold 99% when it comes to a Tioman trip, but from 99% of not wanting to go, it became 99% of I had to go, simply because my Dad said this: “Follow us, this once. Please?”

Mere words, but so provocative.

I would have declined his invitations had he used the ‘Please’ at the start of every invitations, but something about using it just once during this whole episode makes me feel like I’ll be turning down a great cause if I didn’t go, and that it carried for more weight and persuasion than it should have.

The usage of that word came off authoritarian yet mildly inviting.

I wouldn’t have expected it, but I’m going to Tioman in 2 weeks time, when just days back I would vehemently decline any invitations at all — which I actually declined when Dad initially posed them to me many times, days earlier.

My Dad used it sparringly, and I definitely could take heed in that during my ‘negotiations’ at work.

Where I used to bend and submit to customers’ demands and requests, I’ve slowly growned into someone who’s taking control of situations at work, and controlling them instead of the other way around when I first started out.

I’ll probably still use ‘Please’ at the start of conversations with newer customers, but I’m definitely going to use it less often now.

And when I’m losing control of the situation, perhaps I’ll employ it as a last ditch effort to tilt negotiations in my favour.

So long story short, moral of the story is that ‘Please’ can be a massive gravitational pull in your favour.

To all Dads, if you’re in a protracted negotiation with your sons (and daughters), then instead of appearing to beg with ‘Please’ at the beginning of statements or questions, try using it sparringly.

Will you? Please?